Mortgage or marriage?

“The couple that pays together, stays together.” Or at least that appears to be the case in South Florida, where the number of divorces has dropped dramatically.

The Miami Herald reports that court officials think the tough economy is keeping couples together because they can’t afford to pay for separate residences, and they don’t have the money to go through the costs of a legal split.

In Miami-Dade County, almost 1,300 fewer divorces were filed from January through May this year than in the same time period in 2007, a decrease of about 18 percent, according to Zoila Miranda, the court operations officer in charge of family filings. The drop comes after five years in which the number of divorces each year was relatively constant.